How Don Weatherby Finds Profitable Land Deals for Texas Development

Don Weatherby (00:00)

I have no better skills than anybody else out there. I just, what it is, it was a desire to, desire to win and desire to make something out of my life. On Friday nights, back when my wife and I first got married, we were 28 and 20, 27, 28 years old. I bought a few houses, sold them, but didn’t make very much money. But on Friday nights we’d go.

through Office Depot and dream one day of owning a computer, owning a fax machine, owning things like that. So we had nothing.

Scott Bursey (02:04)

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey. And today we’re talking about one of the most foundational and profitable parts of real estate. Finding that perfect dirt to develop. Our guest today is a master of the land game in the 817 area code. A true visionary who sees potential where others just see raw acreage. He’s Don Weatherby and he’s bringing the fuel.

Don Weatherby (02:08)

you

Scott Bursey (02:33)

of foresight and precision to our conversation today. Don, welcome to the show.

Don Weatherby (02:39)

Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (02:41)

It is just wonderful having

you here and done for our listeners that may not be familiar with your journey. Please tell us how did your career begin and what’s your focus now?

Don Weatherby (02:53)

Well, I started out buying and flipping houses when I was probably about 26, 27 years old. That was back when they were very inexpensive. Then I started several other different companies, roofing business. Roofing company was my last one I started, built it up, sold it in 21. Then I went, so during that time to the 90s, we were buying and houses.

The most houses I bought and sold one year was 27 homes, my wife and I did. And so, but then we started buying houses and wanting to own a financial and we felt we wanted to get to a hundred homes. And we got a few, got 15 or 20 in there and realized it’s not where we want to be. So we, I’ve always dreamed of being in the commercial industry. And so we sold a lot of that stuff and bought our first piece of property in 2008. And,

built our first building development in 2008 in the FlexSpace industry.

Scott Bursey (03:55)

What a wonderful journey. Don, let’s dive right into the first question here that everybody wants to know. What is the single biggest advantage you feel developers have right now when sourcing off market land?

Don Weatherby (04:09)

Biggest, my goodness. You know, the biggest advantage, the hardest thing is to do is find the right piece of land. And, with today’s technology, with the traffic count and everything they have today, it makes it a lot less of a gamble of knowing the right piece of property. And so it, back when I first started, it was just a guess here, that looks good. And it’s just a gut feeling, but now it’s more of a,

Now it’s more information gathering.

Scott Bursey (04:41)

Absolutely. And what’s one aspect of your business that you feel you might need to work on a little bit?

Don Weatherby (04:49)

Getting better at dealing with the cities and when I’m building inside the city limits is pretty tough. Also, I need to focus on finding land faster, better. That’s my bottleneck.

Scott Bursey (05:08)

Sure. Okay. Given the rapid population growth in Texas, where do you see the next major untapped pockets for residential or mixed-use land development emerging in the 817 over the next 18 months or so, Don?

Don Weatherby (06:10)

just outside of the city limits. mean, just the smaller towns are growing so fast. I picked the smaller towns. When I say smaller towns, Aledo, Weatherford, Azel, properties like that, where the town is growing so fast, that’s where I’m moving into and finding properties out there. They’re still at a reasonable price.

Scott Bursey (06:33)

Okay

Understood. Let me ask you this, what strategy are you employing to perhaps grow or to enhance the business over the next 18 to 24 months?

Don Weatherby (06:47)

What’s the strategy? Well, it’s all about finding land. That’s the biggest part of my strategy. I want to build 20 business parks in the next five years.

Scott Bursey (06:59)

And we talked a little bit about the team effort and so forth prior to the show beginning. How big is your team Don?

Don Weatherby (07:08)

don’t have a very big team. I have a vice president of construction. He’s a young man. He’s doing great. He’s doing great for me. He’s ⁓ kind of taking over what I used to do. And he’s doing a fantastic job in that area. And he has a bunch of subs and a couple of people underneath him that work for him full time. My management, my leasing lady, she’s a young lady also. She’s doing a fan. I went kind of younger because I know more technology.

I used to, you they know the advertising stuff better than I do. She’s taken over and my leasing has accelerated so fast and management’s good. She has a lady underneath her. And then I have somebody that’s kind of my assistant. She takes care of my stuff. So I have a very small team, but we have a lot of good, I mean, we have a lot of stuff that’s going on and they’re doing a fantastic job.

Scott Bursey (08:00)

Excellent. Don, you’ve been in the business for years now, decades. What have you seen evolve from when you first began to where the business is right now? And where do you see it going even further down the road?

Don Weatherby (08:14)

Wow, that’s a great question. I’ve just seen it accelerate so fast in the last two or three years. A lot of people are coming into this area. We are a great area. Texas is a great area, period. And I think we’re, even, I’ve lived through the 2008 bubble, the 2001 bubble. Even when the rest of the country’s not doing good, Texas does good.

And so 2008, all I had to do is drop all my rents down a little bit. I still had everything rented out. And so I made it through there. And so, you know, that’s kind of how I feel about the whole, Metroplex and Texas and where we’re going to go, where we’ll be going. So did I answer your question, Scott? I’m not sure if I really. Okay.

Scott Bursey (09:02)

absolutely, absolutely. Very insightful.

And let me ask you this. What are some of the hot spots in Texas right now that, that as you see it, that you might ⁓ want to capitalize on here in the near future?

Don Weatherby (09:14)

Well, just the whole Metroplex is a hot spot on all the edges. You’ve got all the way from East Texas down south towards the middle of the in walks. The hatches growing extremely fast all the way around over to Aledo up to a zoo up to spring town, even Brock. I mean, they’re just everywhere in the whole Metroplex is great. This is a hot area. Now Houston’s a hot area too. And we’ll probably move. I’ll be looking at Houston at some point.

And so we’re gonna hit different parts of the state of Texas.

Scott Bursey (09:48)

Okay, excellent. Don, we’ve got to know if you were starting out over, let’s say $25,000 in your pocket, what would be your first move knowing what you know now today?

Don Weatherby (10:37)

Ooh, that’s a great question. I actually started out with 50,000. It was my kids retirement. It was all three of my kids’ college funds. And we borrowed the 50,000 from them. That’s how we bought our first house. So what I would do with 25 grand, I would start out in a, if I was a small, if you’re going to do that, something like that, start out with some kind of a residential along the outer banks of the Metroplex out in the counties.

You can find things out there a little bit less. Again, it all depends on what you like. I I love commercial real estate. So I just use residential to get me to where I wanted to be in commercial. So if your love is for residential, I mean, residential does great. There’s a lot of guys that have made a lot of money on residential houses, but I just, I don’t want to deal with the people. I have four or five rental houses now and I just keep them because they’re

paid off and they make a little bit of money. again, commercials is it’s at for me.

Scott Bursey (11:40)

Okay, point well taken. Don, if someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, Hey, this is someone I’d want to partner with or learn from. What do you want them to know first about your business?

Don Weatherby (11:53)

First about my business, that’s a great question, Scott.

you know, it’s, again, is it comes down to picking the right spot, the land and be able to pull the trigger. I’ve showed several people, you need to buy that piece of that, or you need to buy that house. You need to do this. You need to take it and you need to buy it, divide the seven acres up, flip it. You have six other lots do this and this, and they just don’t do it. The biggest thing is to do it. You got to do it.

You just got to do it. And so, you know, I’m a risk taker. I’ve gambled it all several times. And 2001, 9-11 hit. You know, that was a tough area in the manufacturing industry I had. You know, I was upside down, $2 million. And so, you just fight through it. You got to take the risk. I was going for it.

Scott Bursey (12:23)

Sure.

Is there any part of your business that you’d like to double down on?

Don Weatherby (12:48)

Not at this age. I’m 63 years old. Right now I’ve done doubling. Right now I’m building a long term retirement and showing my kids how to do it. So I’m not taking big risk. When I say big risk, my big risk is probably different than a lot of people’s risk. Mine are a little big risk, you know what I’m saying? $20 million, $30 million, I’m not willing to do that. I’m willing to spend a million or two here.

Scott Bursey (13:02)

Okay.

Given your experience, what would, what advice would you give somebody starting out today?

Don Weatherby (13:22)

my gosh.

You know, I would love, that’s, I love to show young people how to do it. I came from nothing. I think in 1992, I just showed my son my tax returns in 1992. I made $3,000 and I was working for $4.50 an hour with a college degree. And I still, you just fight through it. I started a business, built it up.

started another business, built it up, bought real estate on the side. you know, when you live in a, your friends all making and living in these three, $400,000 houses, you live in a 70 or $80,000 house, but you have real estate everywhere. That’s, that’s the key. For me it was.

Scott Bursey (14:07)

Okay, excellent great breakdown on that Don and Don is there any challenges you’re watching closely now? This could be a market risk competition perhaps Access to deals or capital, you know that sort of thing

Don Weatherby (15:03)

Competitions is when I’m watching very closely. Everybody’s starting to jump into the flex light industrial space. A lot of people are starting to jump in that. When I started out, there was just very few. And so I’m really watching closely because they even have big seminars on how to build these things and stuff. And people are starting to build them and they just don’t know much. And they’re kind of misleading some of these people.

and taking big risks on stuff. My risks are in the three to $5 million range. And so when you’re residential, your risk is two or $300,000. So big difference in risk level, but your returns are better. again, I’m watching my competition is the main thing I’m watching for right now.

Scott Bursey (15:47)

And that is something to keep a keen eye on. No question about that. Don, let me ask you this. Is there any takeaways that you would like to leave with our listeners today? Any gold nuggets? And this could be some stories that you have from your tenure over your experience or any sort of information that you could pass along to our listeners that you feel would be valuable.

Don Weatherby (16:14)

You know, I’ll tell you, my biggest thing is you can do it. People, you, I mean,

I have no better skills than anybody else out there. I just, what it is, it was a desire to, desire to win and desire to make something out of my life. On Friday nights, back when my wife and I first got married, we were 28 and 20, 27, 28 years old. I bought a few houses, sold them, but didn’t make very much money. But on Friday nights we’d go.

through Office Depot and dream one day of owning a computer, owning a fax machine, owning things like that. So we had nothing.

I think we made $12,000 together. And I think next year we made $28,000 together, but we saved every penny until we got to $50,000 and took that $50,000 and made our first investment. so my biggest…

My biggest thing is just, if you’re a young person, just focus on it. know, a lot of our friends were going out partying and having a good time. were buying these nice houses, brand new cars. We lived in an apartment. We saved every money. We worked every weekend. But at the end of the day, they borrowed money from us. So, I mean, you know, it’s one of those things that I would love to, you know, show young people how to win and teach them how to win on this stuff.

And when I say when, success is based off of everybody’s different. Everybody’s different off of success. My number’s here, their number could be here, still success. So outline what you call success and work for it.

Scott Bursey (17:56)

There you go. Some excellent words of advice. Don, this has been pure gold. You’ve dropped some incredible knowledge bombs on our pros today, and I can’t thank you enough.

Don Weatherby (18:08)

Scott, I say one other thing then? So with your listeners out there, if anybody runs across a good piece of land, please, you can go to my website, look it up. I can show you. ⁓ If I buy it and we buy it, I could figure out how to pay you a commission or let you be a partner of mine. And I can slowly show you how to do something like that. ⁓ But I have a lot of real estate.

Scott Bursey (18:11)

Absolutely, yes.

Don Weatherby (18:36)

arms out there so I’ll see a lot of real estate but if somebody finds something that’s peace I wouldn’t mind having them call me but you can get on my website whether you don’t mind me saying it right Scott? Whether it be business parks

Scott Bursey (18:48)

Not at

all. In fact, if you could give the full rundown, if somebody wants to partner with you, you know, follow your journey done or collaborate with you in any fashion, what is the best way for them to reach out and contact you?

Don Weatherby (19:03)

best way would be, through my, website, weatherbybusinessparks.com. And if you go there, you’ll see, my name down there somewhere, my email address, you’re more than welcome to call, call my office. again, I’m Don Weatherby. my, uh, so please, if, uh, and I’m only, you know, it’s, if you’re a young person or something like that, and you want to try to figure out, see how real estate’s done. I could, if I buy that piece of property, we can put you in as a small partner.

We’ll figure something out to show you the ropes, to show you something, just to kind of guide you, guide these young people in the right direction. What I would say, my direction. Again, everybody’s success is different.

Scott Bursey (19:43)

That is fantastic, Don. And Don, thank you for being on the show today.

Don Weatherby (19:49)

Thank you very much, I appreciate it very much.

Scott Bursey (19:51)

And for our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We have a lineup of guests coming up just like Don, who are making big moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.